Montreal City Weblog

Kate 07:57 on 2019-01-16 Permalink Reply  

• Steve Q 09:15 on 2019-01-16 Permalink

  Hahaha ! Our little world filled with zealots on the far left is getting funnier and funnier by the day !

  I gues i’m going to have to stop listening to James Brown, Tiken Jah Fakoly or Nina Simone because i’m afraid to be targeted as someone who does ”cultural appropriation”.

• qatzelok 10:26 on 2019-01-16 Permalink

  Hopefully, those millions of French-Canadians who moved to the USA or Ontario for work and appropriated American culture.in the process.. will soon have to come back to Quebec and enroll in intense French immersion.

• Chris 11:07 on 2019-01-16 Permalink

  “A white comic with dreadlocks says…” yes, but don’t forget this part: “establishment confirmed its decision to exclude comedian…”

  Hilariously, it was a placed called “Snowflake Comedy Club”! Snowflakes indeed!

  Steve Q: there’s a more precise term for this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regressive_left

• Tim 11:09 on 2019-01-16 Permalink

  “Snowflake Comedy Club?” This has got to be a hoax.

• Chris 11:15 on 2019-01-16 Permalink

  If it’s a hoax, the sad thing is how believable it is.

• Bill Binns 11:16 on 2019-01-16 Permalink

  Laugh it up. This stuff is always hilarious the first time you hear it. It’s funny until it shows up in your HR manual at work. The people who are working overtime to come up with this nonsense have a huge amount of power relative to their numbers.

• Ian 16:08 on 2019-01-16 Permalink

  Such a fine line between satire, fake news, and alt-right false flags.

• Jonathan 21:40 on 2019-01-16 Permalink

  Chris Tim Steve Ian Bill.. I wonder how many of these comments are by white cis-gendered men. I think it’s alright to let others speak about this subject matter.

• Chris 23:12 on 2019-01-16 Permalink

  Jonathan, who has said others can’t speak about this subject matter?

• dhomas 01:18 on 2019-01-17 Permalink

  Dreadlocks have existed for so long (probably as long as hair has existed), I’m quite certain no one culture can hold claim to them. Check out the Wikipedia entry on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreadlocks.

• Bill Binns 10:46 on 2019-01-17 Permalink

  @dhomas – I’m sure if you go back far enough, just about every culture had hats which included bird feathers. Don’t wear one at Osheaga without a status card though. The last people to make feather hats own the trademark outright.

• Ian 11:20 on 2019-01-17 Permalink

  Oh come on Bill, nobody thought those headdresses were anything but “Indian headdresses”.
  That aside, Jonathan, what does being cis-men or not have to do with dreadlocks? Way to white knight there.

• walkerp 11:22 on 2019-01-17 Permalink

  I knew this would get a higher rate of comments from outrage reflex brigade. I think we can all agree, politics aside, that dreadlocks on Caucasians are just aesthetically very unpleasant to look at and be around. I, for one, agree with this dress code policy.

• Ian 11:57 on 2019-01-17 Permalink

  Frankly I’m more concerned that this false flag hoax mocking people for caring about cultural appropriation. I’m not surprised that it was effective, but let’s not just hand-wave the fact that this is effectively alt-right fake news.

• walkerp 12:24 on 2019-01-17 Permalink

  You are basically correct, Ian. Whatever the facts are here, these kinds of controversies have been going on in University campuses forever. They used to remain there too, because testing out your political boundaries is a fundamental part of being a young person on the verge of adulthood and the campus is a great place to do that. Today, with the internet, every minor controversy gets broadcast to the whole planet and triggers strong emotional reactions which lead to further political extremism and division. You get people saying stupid things like “It’s funny until it shows up in your HR manual at work.”

• Bill Binns 13:40 on 2019-01-17 Permalink

  Actual example of “It’s funny until it shows up in your HR manual at work”. Less than a year passed between the first time I heard of the term “microaggressions” and thought it just another ludicrous Berkeleyism and seeing it pop up in HR documentation for a very large multi-national corporation I work with.

  The issue that walkerp mentions regarding news reports of these issues leaking out of the University make believe sand boxes in which they were created and being circulated out here in the real world is real and works two ways. Corporations and municipalities who so badly want to appear as bleeding-edge progressive read those same stories and very quickly, insane rules dreamed up by blue haired folks meeting in the back room of the local Feminist Communist bookstore can become laws and workplace regulations.

  Ian’s assertion that this is a “Neo-Liberal false flag operation” (apparently a coordinated effort between the Gazette and Metro newspapers in this case) is also a well worn technique often used in the earliest stages of acclimating the general public to the next big progressive leap forward.

  I don’t give a damn what happens at the “Snowflake Comedy Club” but I know all too well how quickly their rules can spread to the Cineplex or City Hall.

• Hamza 14:04 on 2019-01-17 Permalink

  I don’t understand – is the position here that white ppl should be allowed to sport dreadlocks unabashedly or that corporations are somehow secret bastions of communist feminism or … what ? My head hurts.

• Bill Binns 14:14 on 2019-01-17 Permalink

  @Hamza – Well, at the very least, we should give hair (which cannot be removed for an event) the same protections given to ultra important, never to be interfered with for any reason whatsoever (including for the safety of the wearer), religious hats.

• Chris 21:18 on 2019-01-17 Permalink

  dhomas, interesting read! It’s almost as if we homo sapiens, across time and place, are more alike than different!

  Bill, I thought about the religious hats analogy too, but it’s not quite the same. There have been various hat proposals, but the strictest would prevent people from taking the bus, holding a job, etc. That’s quite a bit more than denying someone at a private establishment. Still, it begs the question: if it’s ok to deny someone (at a private establishment) because of their haircut, would it be okay to deny them because of their religious hat?

  Ian, hypothetically, if it’s a false flag, it doesn’t follow that their motivation would be pro-alt-right, they could also be anti-regressive-left leftists.

• Jonathan 06:23 on 2019-01-22 Permalink

  @Ian, @Chris I just mean to say that, as white/straight/cis-gendered men, sometimes it’s useful to let others (marginalized/colonized/previously discriminated against) explain to us how they may feel further oppressed/offended/triggered by actions done by the dominate culture. I think it’s hard for a lot of people from the dominant culture to understand/accept… as evidenced by the comments in this thread.

  I’m not being a white knight or pretending to understand, I choose to sit back and accept that others may be offended by certain things and that I will try my hardest to respect those folks and try to not offend anyone. I’m merely suggesting that you do the same.